The last starchitect: Ma Yansong’s ostentatious, otherworldly case for the architectural showstopper

Ma Yansong steps into a spotlight of his own design. The star Chinese architect is in the entry plaza at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, the audacious and gargantuan blockbuster of a building he’s designed in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park to hold the art collection of filmmaker George Lucas. Ma, 51, is here for the museum’s press preview day in early September, and gamely walks into a circle of sunlight shining through the oculus in the roof of the $1 billion museum, where he...